Was and Were/ My Achilles Heel

Osso, You rang? I don't have anything that bothers me in my verbal life. When I'm writing, I'm more careful than I am when I'm speaking, except, of course, around here where I view writing as as close to speaking as you're gonna get without actually speaking.

Most of you have mentioned some very common problems and mistakes--problems and mistakes I'm paid to fix. Of course, they're the tip of the iceberg from an editing point of view.

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Oops, just reread and realized that I was asked a question. Ending a sentence with a preposition is no longer sinful. Also splitting infinitives is no longer considered wrong. It's just as well. Both these rules can result in some awkward sentences. There are other relaxed aspects to the language I haven't entirely accepted--yet. "Different from" is the way I say it even though experts are now willing to accept "different than" in certain constructions. There's also so loosey-goosey usage with "myriad." The term has been used incorrectly for so long by so many that the mistake is now considered kind of ok. Not with me, though. Not yet.

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Did you mean as as? I understand as as. It is similar to my that that....

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Will you give us myriad examples?

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I won't tell you how long I stared at that "as as." Pondered. Thought. Left 'em. I think they're right--just as two "thats" in a row can be right. But I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time; won't be the last time.

You want examples? You used myriad the way I would. But there are plenty (puh-lenty) of people who would say, "a myriad of." Your request would read, "Will you give us a myriad of examples?" Feh.

As for "different from" and "different than," there are situations in which "than" is acceptable in order to avoid awkward construction. For example, "I view the matter in a different way than you do," is considered less awkward than, "I view the matter in a different way from the way in which you do." This example comes from a book written by someone I have high regard for. (Yes, I'm ending a sentence with a preposition.) However, I'm disinclined to follow his advice on this subject in formal writing.

There were neither myriad examples nor a myriad of examples, but I hope there were enough.

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One thing that really grates on my eyes and ears is the improper use of "to beg the question"--i.e. when people use it to mean "to raise or pose a new question." Ugh.

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I do agree with you, Roberta, on "a myriad of." That is so wrong, it is simply offensive to the eye and ear. Haven't seen it much, but I assume you have.

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Andy, Don't ask. You wouldn't believe the stuff I see. Mountains of it. Sigh. It's a living--almost.

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was, were
If you're talking about the sentences, "If I was a king..." or "If I were a king..." there's absolutely no gramatical difference; were is just a bit more formal.
Norm
http://www.bostonenglish.pl
http://bostonenglish.pl

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There's no difference in meaning, but "if I were" is more correct to the extent that the sentence requires the subjunctive mood. But increasingly fewer people are concerned about the subjunctive mood these days, so you can get away with "if I was."

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Re: Was and Were/ My Achilles Heel

Phoenix32890 wrote:

I would like a buck for every time I wrote "was" in a post, and looked at it. I then realized that the word should have been "were", and I scramble to edit it before someone else posts in between.

I blame it on my Brooklyn upbringing. Over in those parts, the word "was" is used indiscriminitely. It was only when I continued my education that I realized that saying "If I was going" is not correct English.
Still, I constantly make that same mistake, but usually am able to correct myself.

Do any of you have continuing problems with using English correctly, even though you have spoken it and written it for the vast majority of your life? Fess up!

The reason that you do it, Phoenix, is that it is perfectly natural English and perfectly grammatical English. That makes it perfectly correct English. There has been a prescription against, but like all prescriptions it's wrong.

The split infinitive 'rule', the don't end a sentence with a preposition 'rule', the ... .

These were never rules in the sense that they made any sense. They never described how English worked. They were from the day they were penned, wrong.

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Shapeless wrote:

There's no difference in meaning, but "if I were" is more correct to the extent that the sentence requires the subjunctive mood. But increasingly fewer people are concerned about the subjunctive mood these days, so you can get away with "if I was."

The subjunctive is a remnant of a much richer subjunctive that was present in older forms of English. There are only a few remaining forms of the subjunctive left in English. Every form of the subjunctive has at least one other way to express the same thought.

If I lived in London, ...

There's only one way to do this with lexical verbs and it's not a subjunctive form. So too with 'was' and 'were'. 'was' is an alternative to 'were'. Neither is more or less correct. One is more formal, but formal does not equate to correct.

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Re: Was and Were/ My Achilles Heel

JTT wrote:

The split infinitive 'rule', the don't end a sentence with a preposition 'rule', the ... .

These were never rules in the sense that they made any sense. They never described how English worked. They were from the day they were penned, wrong.

There are many who consider them "rules" these days (including many of my former college professors...) but I wonder if they were considered rules on "the day they were penned"--i.e., whether they were penned as rules or, as I'd always been told, "mere" stylistic preferences. It would be interesting to do some research on the history of the split infinitive; I'm sure many people already have. A quick internet search pulled up this amusing site: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/cyc/s/split.htm

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I have a couple of very old, time-honored, and highly regarded style and grammar books here. (I refuse to part with them.)

I looked up split infinitives. One book referred to them as "inelegant." The other suggested that they were a lapse of linguistic etiquette. Neither mentioned a rule. Both indicated that a split infinitive was preferable to an awkwardly constructed sentence.

The current edition of the Chicago Manual of Style suggests that there are circumstances under which it is perfectly justifiable and, in fact, preferable to split an infinitive. However, it also suggests that infinitives shouldn't be split if they don't have to be. The essence of the situation lies in the intended meaning.

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Re: Was and Were/ My Achilles Heel

Shapeless wrote:

JTT wrote:
The split infinitive 'rule', the don't end a sentence with a preposition 'rule', the ... .

These were never rules in the sense that they made any sense. They never described how English worked. They were from the day they were penned, wrong.

There are many who consider them "rules" these days (including many of my former college professors...) but I wonder if they were considered rules on "the day they were penned"--i.e., whether they were penned as rules or, as I'd always been told, "mere" stylistic preferences.

It's always made me wonder, Shapeless, how these "college professors" could actually make a career out of advancing stylistic preferences/opinions. To my mind, whatever the object of study, "preferences/opinions are not words that come to mind when one considers academic study.

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Roberta wrote:

I have a couple of very old, time-honored, and highly regarded style and grammar books here. (I refuse to part with them.)

I looked up split infinitives. One book referred to them as "inelegant." The other suggested that they were a lapse of linguistic etiquette. Neither mentioned a rule. Both indicated that a split infinitive was preferable to an awkwardly constructed sentence.

That's always been the only measure of proof for these silly prescriptions, Roberta; deem something "inelegant"; "a lapse of linguistic etiquette". Any book that uses this type of phraseology can be safely consigned to the trashbin.

Quote:

Gatekeeping

Barring The Gates Of Language
"You say po-tay-toe, and I say po-tah-toe" Our appearance, manner and the way we speak broadcast a social message. Language gatekeepers - often self-appointed - judge how we speak.

Linguistic gatekeeping [prescriptivists] is primarily exclusionary in purpose. It involves mostly a list of don't's. Language gatekeepers typically do not engage in any systematic study of language structure. Instead, they issue judgments on specific items of usage that are structurally and functionally unrelated.

Gatekeepers cite particular words or expressions as "wrong," "incorrect," "illogical," "uneducated," "awkward," "substandard" or "ungrammatical" (out), and sometimes to alternative items as "right," "correct," "logical," "educated," "standard" or "grammatical" (in). These are terms of prescriptive rather than descriptive grammar.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/correct/gatekeeping/

The current edition of the Chicago Manual of Style suggests that there are circumstances under which it is perfectly justifiable and, in fact, preferable to split an infinitive. However, it also suggests that infinitives shouldn't be split if they don't have to be. The essence of the situation lies in the intended meaning.

Other than the sections on punctuation and citation, the CM of S is pretty useless as a guide to the workings of English grammar.

The "rule" was based on a shoddy comparison of English to Latin. Any book that hasn't figured that out by now and is still trying to dispense any guidelines whatsoever on split infinitive usage also can be safely consigned to the dump.

Roberta, for a discussion on some of the grammar issues from the CM of S, see the, "Should there be a gender-neutral form of he or she pronouns?" thread, especially pages 4 and 5.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=68416&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=chicago+manual+style&start=40

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Re: Was and Were/ My Achilles Heel

Shapeless wrote:

I wonder if they were considered rules on "the day they were penned"--i.e., whether they were penned as rules or, as I'd always been told, "mere" stylistic preferences.

The question was whether there were "rules" regarding split infinitives. The answer is no, it doesn't appear that rules were established; they are mere stylistic preferences as you suggest.

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Re: Was and Were/ My Achilles Heel

Roberta wrote:

Shapeless wrote:

I wonder if they were considered rules on "the day they were penned"--i.e., whether they were penned as rules or, as I'd always been told, "mere" stylistic preferences.

The question was whether there were "rules" regarding split infinitives. The answer is no, it doesn't appear that rules were established; they are mere stylistic preferences as you suggest.

It was clearly a "rule" for the prescriptivist crowd, Roberta. It has had quite a long history and is still defended by those who refuse to think. If I'm not mistaken, even Oxford took until 1998 to declare it a bad rule.

But to understand what this means, one has to know what 'rule' means. To a prescriptivist, a rule is something that one memorizes but once it is put under scrutiny, it's all too often found that it has no basis in fact or language.

To a Descriptivist, a rule describes how people use the language. The actual rules of language are exceedingly complex because language and what it describes, 'life', are exceedingly complex. There are many rules that have yet to be discovered and described but the process is ongoing.

Luckily for ESLs, the old prescriptions are being rooted out, as are the old prescriptivists.

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Was and Were/ My Achilles Heel

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